Clerk: Lorain municipal court records become computer nightmare'

LORAIN — Municipal court records are in a state of confusion due to computer troubles and other issues, said Lorain Clerk of Courts Lori Maiorana.
Several issues have compounded problems that started in spring 2014, Maiorana said.
“Every day is worse here,” Maiorana said July 14. “I was ready to close the court down today. We have been able to do literally nothing.”
On July 11, the court’s computer network began shutting down, and so far no one has been able to find a reason why, she said.
The court’s public records are disabled for now through www.cityoflorain.org and the court’s computer software vendor in late June announced it is discontinuing supporting the court software.
“A nightmare is what this is,” Maiorana said. “This is an absolute nightmare.”
Maiorana said she hopes to make a presentation soon to Lorain City Council, but also discussed the issues due to media inquiries about the status of court records.
The Municipal Court’s public records currently are offline due to a problem with some warrants being available for public viewing when they should not be, Maiorana said.
The lack of public access to court records is problematic because people rely on the website for background checks for a number of reasons, Maiorana said.
The court typically deals with two types of warrants, Maiorana said.
Bench warrants, also called capias warrants, are issued by the judges against people who do not comply with court orders, Maiorana said. Those typically are made public when they are issued, she said.
The court also deals with white warrants, which the judges usually issue because of complaints filed in the city prosecutor’s office on behalf of someone, Maiorana said.
The white warrants usually involve more serious allegations than the bench warrants and generally are not made public until police serve the white warrants on the people involved, Maiorana said.
For unknown reasons, the court’s computer system is unable to distinguish between the two types of warrants, so last week some white warrants could be seen by the public, she said.
Maiorana said she ordered the court’s computerized public records be shut down until that situation can be fixed so defendants will not know police are coming to deliver the white warrants. If people involved know officers are searching for them it may jeopardize the safety of police, Maiorana said.
“Until I know that those white warrants can be kept private, I don’t want anything up,” she said about the website. The white warrants are made public once defendants are served, Maiorana said.
The public records are not the only problem the clerk of courts office is dealing with.
On June 23, Maiorana received an email from court software vendor AMCAD “that the company is exiting the justice software solutions business,” according to the notice from Richard Lowrey, of AMCAD.
“In recent years, AMCAD has invested heavily in developing its justice solutions suite of products,” Lowrey’s notice said. “Despite this investment, this division has historically operated at negative cash flow levels and the recent termination of AMCAD’s contract with the Oklahoma Administrative Office of Court has exacerbated this situation.
“Because there is no additional capital available to the company and the company’s ongoing cash flow losses are expected to grow, the company is streamlining the business today to sustain the operations that are cash flow generative.”
The city of Lorain still is paying a $95,000 a year toward the $425,000 that the city borrowed to buy the Lorain Municipal Court software, said Maiorana and Lorain Auditor Ron Mantini.
AMCAD officials were in Lorain to help with the software just days before the June 23 notice, Maiorana said.
It seemed unusual the company decided to just drop out of the business instead of selling off the court records division, said Mantini.
“For them to just dump it, if you will, that seems a bit strong,” he said.
Maiorana also provided at least two news articles of counties in recent weeks filing lawsuits against AMCAD. She added a former AMCAD worker is available to hire as a systems consultant for $85 an hour.
In May, Maiorana revealed problems in court records because a former court computer technology chief who was fired April 3 had not made backup files of the court’s electronic records from Feb. 28 to May 19, the day a city computer drive went bad.
Since then, the court has recovered some 96,000 records, but that information cannot be merged into existing court computers, Maiorana said. As a result, clerk of court staff must re-enter onto court computers those records and the nine books’ worth of paper receipts issued to people who came in to pay fines, she said.
The paper receipts are proof people paid, but it also is inconvenient because the clerk’s office staff cannot easily calculate how much people owe the court, Maiorana said.
The clerk’s office also has stopped dispersing money back to the city “because we can’t account for it,” Maiorana said. That figure usually runs about $90,000 a month, she said.
In March, a broken pipe flooded the basement of Lorain City Hall, Maiorana said.
“The records that I was to keep for 50 years and 25 years were floating,” she said.
The papers were infected with black mold, and now the clerk’s office is awaiting permission to dry the papers and shred them, Maiorana said.